Are You Emotionally Ready for Weight Loss Surgery?

May 4, 2016

The surgical weight loss journey is not an easy path to navigate. I imagine it to be similar to winning a million dollar lottery after spending a great part of your life blowing money fast and living from paycheck to pay-day-lender to your next paycheck. The amount of adjusting that has to take place in order for the million dollars to last or come close to lasting a lifetime is overwhelming. Changing the way you view money, spend money, saying no to your shopping buddies are all connected to core beliefs of weight loss surgery being a tool to improve and enhance the quality of your life or just another quick, short-lived fix.

I believe we can take a close look at how we deal with life difficulties and predict if we are emotionally ready for weight loss surgery. If food is the only choice in coping with past and present hurts, it becomes vital that new ways of self-soothing are developed and applied before weight loss surgery.

Successfully recovering from emotional eating requires the individual to be willing to feel difficult emotions and not self-sabotage with old habits related to their relationship with food.

Work Through Your Emotions and Feel Them

It is not uncommon for individuals with obesity to feel zero emotions when food has been the primary medication used to numb out when life becomes difficult. It can be scary to feel again. Emotions such as feeling alive, confident, sexy, attractive, excitement, shock, grief, trapped, anger, loneliness, and a host of other feelings will be experienced at various intensity levels post-weight loss surgery.

How will you get by when life continues to happen and emotional eating comes with adverse consequences post-weight loss surgery?  What hinders many individuals is their resistant to give up old habits especially their unwillingness to be uncomfortable and not reach for food to fill emotional spaces that reside within the body. Difficult emotions can bring us closer to healing if we do not distract ourselves with food, TV, social media, alcohol, shopping, spending, sex, pain pills, etc.

We just need to be willing to feel and do what is best for ourselves in spite of obstacles. For the surgical tool to work in moving you further away from obesity, you must be willing do the physical, spiritual, and emotional hard work.

I am writing this article to remind you that you have come through serious hurt and pain that is likely to resurface as weight is shed.  Significant weight loss and a history of sexual assault, sexual abuse, physical abuse, and/or psychological abuse can unleash such emotions as anger, outrage, revengeful, disconnect, shame, exposed, fear, etc.

How do you know when you are completely healed from past traumas?  Some of the indications that you are emotionally ready for weight loss surgery and to give up self-medicating yourself with food are:

• You are capable of telling a trusted helper (friend, significant other, parent, therapist, life coach) your experience without falling apart or physically reliving the thoughts and feelings associated with the experience.
• You are able to share your experience without wishing anything was different. To wish the experience away suggest the presence of shame.
• Lastly, you are able to speak your truth without judging yourself and again, you do not soothe with food.  Overcoming tough emotions can be challenging.  Meaningful relationships and connection are important in life.

Your Emotional Readiness with Relationships and Emotional Eating

When an individual undergoes weight loss surgery, changes occur on the inside as well as on the outside of the body.

Before you undergo weight loss surgery, evaluate important relationships in your life starting within your household. Your spouse or significant other has an important role in helping you create a healthy environment and lifestyle.  If any conflict exists within the household such as criticism, judgment, violence, silence, etc. your chance of success is at a minimum.

As a marriage and family therapist, I have yet to meet a happily married couple living two different lives.  I have met spouses who were lonely and longing for their partner.  When we are in constant connection with unconditional love (acceptance, compassion, admiration, joy, etc.) we experience and share our best selves.

Be aware that many individuals regain weight out of fear of losing an important relationship.  This is not an example of unconditional love.  Anyone who needs you to stay unhealthy in order for them to be okay, does not and cannot love you. Before undergoing such a serious surgery begin working on yourself and cleaning house.

Start putting together a tool kit (real or imaginary) that incorporates alternatives to emotional eating while understanding that some situations and the emotions may remain and require psychopharmacology treatment.

According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM-5), disabling medical conditions such as morbid obesity are complicated by reoccurring depressive episodes. Weight loss surgery does not cure mental illness. New found energy, joined with excitement, often leads individuals to stop taking psychotropic medications post-surgery. This is dangerous since our emotions are not static; we do not live on Cloud 9 or Ground Zero.  Continue taking your medications as prescribed until your psychiatrist or physician determines necessary changes in your medical treatment.

The Journey Comes With Obstacles, It Can Also Bring Positive Emotions

Irrational thoughts and beliefs have led many to cope with emotions by using food.  In childhood, where we inherit such beliefs, as you will feel better if you ate a little something; or maybe if I ate what you cooked, you will love me; or because there are starving children in the world, I must clean my plate. Perhaps, the excess weight has provided protection from harm.

Unpacking or processing core beliefs can lead us out of the emotional confusion. Weight loss surgery does not cure emotional pain. You must be willing to do the work to heal from within.  Although the journey comes with emotional obstacles, it can also bring about positive emotions of hope, empowered, joy, adventurous, beauty, etc.

Finally, on your road to recovery from obesity, overeating, distorted thinking, self-sabotage, or all of the above, it is my prayer that the realization that YOU were enough and are enough reign throughout your entire body.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Sabrina C. Richardson, MMFT, LMFT of Intrinsic Therapy, LLC and Living Beyond The Tool, is a Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist in the State of South Carolina. She graduated from the University of South Carolina Upstate earning a Bachelor’s of Arts in Experimental Psychology and a Master’s in Marriage and Family Therapy from Converse College. Read more articles by Sabrina!

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